


Growing Up

by jaspeada0928



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Keith's past it's tragic, Lance was his family's babysitter, broganes, keith turns into a baby/ kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8279188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaspeada0928/pseuds/jaspeada0928
Summary: Because of Lance, Keith is turned into a baby, a galra baby, and the team is left to wonder what Keith really is. Then Keith starts growing up extremely fast and slowly regains his memories. Keith's past is darker than the team could have imagined, and Shiro knows more about it than they originally thought.





	1. Blue Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw a post in Tumblr about Keith turning into a galra baby and I got this idea. Also, I didn't know what to put as a tittle, so if you have some ideas please tell me.

They had landed on a planet to get supplies and water, the landscape resembled a desert so it had been really surprising when they had found a huge lake in the middle of the sand, Allura knew what she was doing. Using the paladin uniforms while carrying containers with water to the castle made it twice as difficult, the planet had a really high temperature, the five paladins were sweating, but Allura wouldn't allow them to change clothes for safety. Lance would occasionally glare at Pidge who was carrying only half the amount of water of what the rest of them were lifting while Allura was carrying twice of it, apparently alteans had a superior strength compared to humans; Keith had to admit that it was somehow annoying watching the two girls carry the weight easily while he himself was struggling with it. Shiro and Hunk were looking at their surroundings, the only thing that seemed to bother them was the temperature. Apparently, only Lance and him had problems with the containers, as the blue paladin would make them easily know with the tired expression on his face. At least he wasn't complaining.

The planet was devoid of life, or so it seemed. No plants or animals, except for some strange electric blue flowers that are out of the sand here and there; and complete silence only broken by their breathing at the sound of their steps on the relish sand. It was kind of unnerving. Allure had said that there had never been any known life in that desert planet, but with the galra empire looking for them, they had to be alert all the time.

At last, the castle appeared on the distance and after ten minutes they finally reached the currently open door. Coran was there waiting for them, Keith glanced at Lance whose annoyed expression sent a clear message:  _Why didn't he come?_ They all knew the answer, someone needed to stay and protect the castle, but that didn't stop the sweaty paladins from getting a little jealous of the red haired man. 

Allura was the first to put her container on the metallic floor, the others followed. "Now Coran will take care of them, you ca go rest now." The princess told them and then she went to the control room. Pidge went to search for her laptop and Hunk went to the kitchen while Shiro went to his room.

Thinking that he needed some time out of the ship, Keith went out and stared at the dunes, surprisingly, Lance followed. Lance kneeled and grabbed something from the ground, Keith ignored him kept looking at the landscape searching for some kind of movement or life that wan't the weird blue flowers growing on his feet. 

"Keith." Lance called behind him and he turned around to receive a blast of blue dust to his face, he closed his eyes and coughed. He was sure he had eaten some of the dust and that he had inhaled it. His eyes started to itch and his throat and nose did the same. He pressed his eyes shut and kept coughing. "Keith stop exaggerating, it was only pollen." Lance said. Yes, it had been pollen from the blue flowers, but who knows what that stuff could do? After all, they were alien flowers. Then, Keith sneezed and the itching stopped all at once, as if it had never been there.

Next, to him, Lance was snickering "You sneeze like a cat!" And it was true that Keith sneeze was quiet and short.  _You have no idea_ , Keith thought and glared at Lance. "Have you any idea of what that stuff can do?! They are alien flowers! Did you even think about it?!" He yelled, but his voice was hoarse from the coughing. Lance palled for a second and then smiled nervously. "Well, you are okay, right? And it was just a prank, don't exaggerate." Keith glared at him one last time before going into the ship an to his room.

 

 

The paladins were called for dinner and everyone was chatting, but Keith was just staring at his food without eating, Lance glanced at him occasionally, ordering if the pollen had actually done something. Keith felt weird, and he had goosebumps all over his arms, not that they could be seen under his red jacket. He wondered if he had caught some kind of space flu or if it was because of the pollen. If it was and he got sick because of it, he was going to ask Shiro to let them spar and was going to kick Lance's ass. He was sweating, not too much but he knew it was not something natural having in account the air conditioner inside the castle. He was sure that his temperature was higher than normal and he felt cold, like he needed to cover himself with a blanket. He probably had fever.

He kept staring at the food because he just couldn't get himself to eat. Soon, Lance wasn't the only one giving him worried glances. "Keith, are you alright?" Asked Shiro and said boy looked up, startled. Allura gasped and everyone in the table turned to look at her. She was staring at Keith's eyes, wide-eyed.  _Shit_ , the red paladin thought and closed his eyes before anyone could figure out what Allura was staring at. 

He opened them and saw everyone staring at him. The princess blinked and frowned. "I could swear your eyes were- It's, It's not important." She said and continued eating, Hunk did the same, but Shiro and Pidge kept staring at his eyes for a moment before giving up. Corn started to talk with Allura and soon everything was back to normal. Only Lance kept glancing at him, asking silently if he was okay.

Keith clenched his fists below the table. He thought he could control it, he had learned to keep it at bay, to hide it. He couldn't let the team know, not yet, he wasn't ready. Maybe when they defeated Zarkon, if they ever did, he would tell them, but he couldn't risk everything he had for a secret, not when he felt he had a family again. He wasn't going to lose it. Not because of  _it_. Not again.

It sometimes happened, when he was really upset or sick it would get out of control, and he would have to hide and stay away from people so they wouldn't discover the truth, about what he really was. Eventually, he had learned to deal with the flu and fevers by himself, and he was sure he could handle whatever the pollen had caused. He had to. There was no other option, and he had to get out of the dinning room before  _it_ got out of control.

He felt his fangs elongating into his mouth and he knew he couldn't wait another second. He stood up abruptly and everyone turned to look at him. "I'm going to my room." Keith stated and went out to the hall and started waking as fast as he could to his room before anyone could stop him, he resisted the urge to run. He heard footsteps behind him and cursed under his breath.

"Keith, are you okay? I told them you were just tired. Is- is it because of the pollen?" Lances's voice asked from behind and Keith didn't turned. If he did, he was sure that the blue paladin would see his fangs when he replied back and would definitely notice his pupil-less yellow eyes and his purple spotted skin. He prayed silently for the ears to wait some more minutes.

"I'm fine. Just need some rest." He clenched his fists trying to stop the transformation. By that point he was desperate and anxious. Why was Lance so annoying? Why couldn't he stay in the dinning room as everyone else. Lance couldn't know. No one could know.

"You sure? You don't look good."  _Just stop pushing it!_  

"Yes." He hissed. Transforming usually made him more temperamental than usual. He felt his nails elongate into sharp claws inside his fists and crossed his arms on his chest to stop Lance from seeing the purple skin on his fingers, his face was probably the same color.

Without waiting more, he kept walking. He was few meters away from his room door and from safety. Just some few steps more... Keith was literally three steps away from the open door when the blue paladin grabbed his left arm and stopped him. Keith thought he had probably never been that annoyed and angry at anyone before. It was all his fault and he only kept making things worse. If he didn't let go of his arms in the next ten seconds he was going to rip it off.

_Count to ten Keith,_ he told himself,  _you can't just rip his arm off._

_1_

"Look, Keith, I didn't really think about it and I'm sorry."

_2_

"But maybe you should go to a healing pod or something."

_3_

"You were blushing there, you might have fever."

_4_

"I know we discuss a lot but I don't want you to get sick."

_5_

"Let's go tell Allura, I'll confess it was all me, okay?"

_6_

There was a tingling sensation on his ears that only could mean they they were shifting. There was no way he could hide his cat-like ears from Lance. 

_Just shut up and go away, Lance!_

_7_

"Come on, Keith, say something."

_Shit._

In las than five seconds, Keith trampled his left foot hard on Lance's left foot, earning a yelp of agony from the boy, and elbowed Lance on the chest with all his strength, sending the teen to the floor on his butt. "Auch!" Keith ran to the door and saw Lance on the floor by the corner of his eye, looking at him with a hurt expression He went in, closed the door and looked it with the keyboard next to it on the wall. The room was completely dark, and he slit down the wall, enjoying that there, in the darkness, no one could see what he really was, what kind of monster he really was.

Lance started knocking on the door. "Keith! Open it! What's wrong with you? You probably broke some ribs!" Keith's anger at Lance was replaced with guilt. Maybe he had been a little too violent. "Sorry." The knocking stopped. "Are you really okay? I'm pretty sure you have fever. Don't you think it would be better if you-" Keith interrupted. "I'm fine, seriously." He couldn't have been worse.

"Fine." Lance gave up. "But if you get really sick you need to go to Allura." "Fine." 

"Now I'm going to have to made up some excuse about why I have broken ribs. Let's see... Maybe that I surprised you and you hit me in self defense? Best think I can't think of and it's not completely a lie."

Keith admired Lance's ability to get over that kind of things easily and even joke about it. It was something he would never be able to do.

Keith didn't reply. "Alright, I understand, you want to be alone. I'm going." The last part came out fainter as the blue paladin walked away from the door.

Keith sighed and stood up to turn on the lights. There tingling sensation on his ears stopped as two fluffy cat-like ears appeared on his head, a pair of purple gala ears that stood out in the middle of his black hair. 

A shiver reminded him of his fever and he decided to go to sleep, even if he probably wouldn't be able to. Hopefully, the next day the fever would be gone and it would be as if nothing had happened. He  turned off the lights,took out his shoes and lied on his bed, put the white covers over him and closed his eyes. As soon as he did so, sleep took over him and he practically blacked out.

On another room, Lance was inside a healing pod after Shiro and Allura believed his excuse.

 

 

 

The next morning, Lance got out of the pod and went to his room to put on his uniform, they were having training. A couple minutes after he was ready, Allura started to call for them. That's when Lance remembered about Keith and wondered if he was still sick and if he had even heard Allura calling. Trying to convince himself that it was only because he had caused Keith's sickness, Lance went to said paladin's room and after struggling with the keyboard, opened it. 

The room was dark and at first he couldn't see anything but then his eyes adjusted and he saw a small figure under the covers, way too small to be Keith's, maybe a pillow? Probably Keith had already left for training. But something told Lance that he had to check what that figure was.

So he lifted the covers and moved them to the side, below them were Keith' clothes and something below them. Carefully, Lance moved the clothes to see what was inside and his eyes stared into yellow pupil-less eyes a purple galra baby who tilted it's head to one side in curiosity.

 

 

The team, all on their uniforms, were waiting for Lance and Keith who hadn't arrived to the training. Lance being late wasn't something knew, but Keith was.

Then, Lance came rushing into the room, panting as if he had been running for his life. He rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath and finally looked up at the group who were all staring at him in curiosity. Before anyone could ask what was wrong, he spoke, almost yelling.

"There's a baby galra on Keith's room and he is not there!"

"What?"

 

 

 

The team stood around Keith's bed, staring and the creature half covered by the paladin's red jacket. 

"What is it doing here?" Asked Pidge, inspecting the baby.

"What are we going to do with it?" Asked Lance.

Allura sighed. "First of all, stop calling him an  _it_ , second, we can't just throw him out, even if he's our enemy, it's just a baby. And no, I have no idea of how it could have gotten here."

"So we are going to keep it, i mean, him?" Asked Pidge.

"I fear so."

"Then were it's Keith? Do you think there's an intruder in the castle?" Said Shiro.

Hunk, who had been growing at the baby, suddenly realized something. "Wait. Doesn't him somehow look like Keith?"

Everyone looked again at the baby. "The hair is quite similar." Commented Coran.

Allura gasped. "Last night I saw Keith's eyes turn into galra's ones! Maybe it's something of our enemies doing."

Lance laughed nervously." Actually, I think it was me."

"What?"

"I blew this pollen on Keith's face yesterday..."

"That's it!" Said Allura. "The blue flowers of this planet cause an individual to become younger! How could I forget it!"

Everyone stared at her.

"But that doesn't explain why he looks like a galra." Noted Pidge.

"We'll figure it out later. What we need now it's to make the cure. Coran and I will work on that. You four," The altean princess looked at the remaining paladins " will take care of him." 

"What?!" Pidge and Lance complained.

"Come on, guys, he's kinda cute." Hunk said.

"He won't be cute when we have to change his diapers." Pidge grunted.

"Do we even have diapers?" It was Shiro who spoke.

"Actually, yes. Coran will bring you some with other things for Keith." She glanced at the baby on the bed and then at Shiro. "Shiro, please make sure they don't kill him." With that the princess went out of the room and Coran followed.

The paladins stared at Keith. "This is going to be so much fun." Lance said, sarcastically.

"Totally." Agreed Pidge.

"I can't even believe this is happening." Shiro stared at Keith like if he had some big burden he had to carry.

"This can't be that difficult." Hunk tried to cheer up the group of depressed paladins.

Oh, but it could.


	2. Babysitting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will the paladins be able to take care of baby Keith without making a mess?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after doing a brief research about babies and kittens and how to take care of them (and cute things they do) here's this chapter.

"What should we do first?" Asked Shiro and everyone turned around to look at him. The older paladin truly had no idea of what to  _actually_ do to take care of a baby.

"Well first we need to put him diapers and then give him food, maybe a bath later and he needs to sleep a lot or he will get sick and..." Everyone stared at Lance as if he had grown another head. He frowned. "What?"

"How do you even know all that?" Pidge was really curious about how Lance knew that.

"I have five siblings and only one of them is older than me. I have been babysitting for years." Lance stated like if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Hunk stared at Keith again. "So, we need diapers." In that exact moment, Coran went into the room carrying three boxes on his arms, a big one at the bottom and top smaller ones on top. He put them on the floor next to the bed and turned around to face the paladins. "Good luck with this, babies can create quite a mess." And with that he left the room.

Pidge neeled and opened the boxes. "So this one had diapers, this one feeding bottles and this one clothes and toys? Where did they even get this?" No one answered. Lance cleared his throat. 

"We better put him on a diaper before he, er... makes a mess." Everyone nodded. The blue paladin went to the bed and picked up Keith. He put the baby in something like a sitting position on his left arm and put his other arm behind his back so he wouldn't fall. He turned around, looking back at the red paladin who was looking back at him with yellow eyes wide open and his moth sightly open, revealing tiny fangs. Lance frowned. "He shouldn't have teeth yet, he's like five months old." No one answered for a moment and Pidge wondered how much Lance knew about babies. "Maybe baby galras have teeth at five months." Opined Shiro. Lance seemed to accept the answer, the baby kept staring up at him. "What are you looking up?" He questioned softly.

Keith blinked and said: "Ah-goo!" Happily and smiled at Lance. Pidge and Hunk went "Awwwwww....", Shiro smiled softly and Lance's eyes widened and he blushed sightly, that made Keith squeal. "I can't believe I'm saying this, and this is so weird, but Keith is so cute." He said looking at the wall and the other two teens tried to hide their chuckles when they saw Lance's blushing face. "I'm pretty sure babies are not supposed to have this much hair and much less a mini mullet." Lance mentioned, and everyone noticed that Keith had jet black hair in some hair style that looked like a shorter version of his usual style.

"Lance?" It was Hunk. "Can I carry him? I've never carry a baby so..." Keith shifted on Lance's arm so he could look at the person who was speaking. He narrowed his eyes at the yellow paladin for a couple seconds and then smiled and reached for him with one of his little arms. "Oh my God, he is so cute." he blurted. And everyone silently agreed. Carefully, Lance handed Hunk the baby and he grabbed him in the same way as the other teen.

"We better put him on a diaper." Pointed out Pidge. Before anyone could ask who would do it, Lance took out a diaper from the big box, and dropped Keith's clothes to the floor to make space on the bed. 

"Hunk." He ordered and the surprised paladin handed the baby to the other, who efficiently put Keith on the bed on his belly and slid the white diaper below him and ,with quick and swift movements, secured it. He turned around and everyone was blinking in confusion. "What?"

"I still can't believe you know so much about babies." Pidge concluded. "You could be a mom." Behind the girl, Shiro snickered, surprising everyone. "Sorry, Lance, but it's true." Said boy went red and looked away offended. "Well, at least I can do something." He challenged. "It's not my fault I don't have younger siblings." Pidge objected. "Yeah, but-" The discussion stopped when the baby laughed.

Everyone glanced at Keith who was sitting on the bed laughing. "What are you laughing at?" Demanded Lance. And as if he had understood, Keith extended one of his small arms and did a pointing motion towards Lance. Then, abruptly, his laughing stopped and he stared at his extended limb, awestruck. All the paladins except Lance frowned, said boy smiled, knowing what was going to happen. Keith stared at his arm and then extended his other arm and stared at both with wide eyes and his tiny mouth open. Then he giggled and stuck out his tongue a little, putting it on the middle of his teeth and bitting it softly while smiling. He stared at his hands af if he had had some great idea.

"What is he doing?" Asked Pidge. "Wait for it." answered Lance.

Then Keith fell on his back on the bed and started to try to eat his right fist. Pidge and Shiro's eyes widened in surprise while Hunk made a expression that clearly said  _awwwwww...!_ and Lance rolled his eyes. For him, babies trying to eat themselves wasn't something new. He sighed and sat on the bed next to the baby who was now trying to eat his left feet. "Come on, Keith, stop it." Surprisingly, the baby stopped and sat again with his cat- like ears  alert, he stared at Shiro and then smiled and reached with his arms. "Shiro, he wants you to carry him." Lance hinted to the older human who didn't seem to understand what he was supposed to do. "Right."

Shiro went to the bed and glanced at Lance. "How do I-" Lance sighed, exasperated. He picked up Keith like ha had before. "Sit." He ordered and Shiro obeyed. It was weird to see Lance ordering Shiro, but Lance was the expert. "You have to hold him like this." Lance handed the baby to Shiro who awkwardly grabbed Keith like Lance had and looked at the baby who blinked and stuck out his tongue at him. Shiro smiled something like a fatherly smile and then glanced at Lance who had taken out a red t-shirt and black pajama pants from one of the small boxes and started to put the t-shirt on Keith while  Shiro held him. then Shiro lifted Keith, holding him from the chest so Lance could put on the pants. The baby stared at Lance with a frown on his face like if asking  _what the hell are you doing_.

After he was dressed, and that included a pair of tiny red socks, Keith was put on the bed and there he sat, waiting for someone to do something. Lance sat on the floor in front of the bed and everyone followed the example.

"And know we can play with him." Lance stated. He put his hands on his eyes and started saying."Who's there?" The he removed his hands dramatically and said "It's me!" He expected the baby to laugh, instead, Keith stared at him with an annoyed expression like if he was saying  _are you dumb?_  Pidge snickered, Lance glared at her. "Lance, I think Keith's already annoyed by you."  "In my defense, it worked with my siblings." H replied, feeling embarrassed.

Keith started babbling and everyone's attention was back to him. "Llllll...ssss" His eyes were narrowed and he had a serious expression as he concentrated. "Lllll..sssss..... Lllsss!" HE said happily and glanced at Pidge and Lance. "He said his first word!" Hunk exclaimed. "And it's my name!" Lance added.

The next fifteen minutes, the paladins tried to get Keith to say their names. After that, Keith could pronounce their names well enough to be recognized as such. "Ssshh-o", "Pissh", "Unk" and "Lllss".

"Okay, that was really cute." Pidge admitted. 

"Aha!" Hunk, who had been searching for something to play with in the boxes, took out a yellow rattle and started to shake it in front of Keith. The baby's face brightened and he started laughing and reaching for the toy. Toy give it two him and Keith grabbed the toy, which for some reason was bigger than his arm, with both arms and stated shaking it excitedly. But in less than thirty seconds, he got bored and dropped the toy on the  bed.

Suddenly, he pouted and bit his bottom lip. Lance face palmed and complained "NO." just before Keith started to cry. Hunk panicked. "What is wrong? What did we do?!"  

"It's okay, he's probably just angry." Lance assured and grabbed one of the baby bottles from a box. "Hunk, carry him." "O-Okay." The yellow paladin seemed really nervous. He grabbed Ketih like he had done before. "Incline him a little backwards." Lance ordered and hunk did so. "Then Lance carefully put the bottle on Keith's open mouth and the baby instantly grabbed the bottle and started sucking. After two minutes, he let go.

And started to cry again.

"What is wrong know?" The noise was starting to get into Pidge's nerves.

Lance sniffed the air."Ugh, that smell." He put the bottle back into the box and took out a diaper, a cloth, a plastic bag, and a bottle of water from the biggest box. The opened the bottle and dipped the cloth. Hunk understood the situation and and put Keith on the bed on his belly, he was still crying.

Again, very efficiently, Lance lowered Keith pajama pants, removed the diaper and put it on the plastic bag. The blue paladin cleaned the baby's butt with the cloth and quickly slid the clean diaper below the baby and secured it and put the pants back again.

"This is so weird. Keith better not remember this when he is back to normal." He declared.

But then again, Keith started to cry.

"What is it know?!" Hunk was really worried for the baby.

Lance sighed. He had had enough of that with his siblings to have to take care of another paladin. Shiro stood frozen in place, not knowing how to help. "Shiro, I need you to cradle him and rock him to sleep."  Shiro gulped. "Sure."

The man took the baby and started rocking him back and fort. Slowly, Keith stopped crying and he stared back at the man's dark eyes. His eyelids started to close and he blinked slowly. Finally, he sighed softly and fell asleep on Chiro's arms. His mouth was highly open and his tiny tongue was being softly bit by his lips. His ears flickered.

Shiro glanced at Lance silently asking him what to do. "He'll wake up in less than fifteen minutes." the paladin whispered, answering to the unspoken question. Then he turned to face Pidge. "Why aren't you doing anything?" he whispered.

"It's funny to see you guys babysit Keith, and I don't really like to do anything. Watching works for me." she whispered back. Lance sent her an annoyed glare and decided that there was no way to convince Pidge of doing something she didn't want to do.

 

 

During forty minutes, everyone relaxed and rested. Shiro sat on the bed, still cradling Keith who was sleeping peacefully. The room was completely quiet. Then, the minutes passed and the gala's eyes slowly opened. "Sshh-o?" He asked and the man glanced down at him. "Lance, he's awake."

Lance grumbled and stood up. He picked Keith and went to the bathroom.

"Lance? Where are you going?" Hunk asked. Everyone was thinking the same.

"He needs to take a bath." Lance allowed the water to go into the warm tube and set the controls so it would be warm. He then went into the bedroom again and handed the baby to Hunk who couldn't understand what he was supposed to do. The blue paladin removed his white paladin armor and the gloves, so he was left only on the black jumpsuit that was below the uniform. He then picked up Keith again and returned to the bathroom. After some seconds, he stood at the bathroom's door, looking at the team with a raised eyebrow. "Is no one coming to come help?" The paladins finally reacted. 

Hunk and Shiro did the same as Lance, removed his armors, and glanced at Pidge. "You know what?" The girl said. "I'm going to go change into my clothes." And she went out of Keith's bedroom.

The boys and the man went into the bathroom, who was big enough for all of them to fit comfortably. Hunk helped  to remove the baby's clothes and diaper, which he put on the litter basket, and Lance kneeled and slowly put Keith into the water. As soon as the liquid touched Keith's feet, the baby hissed and his ears flattened on his skull. He started to shriek and kick as Lance lowered him into the water until it reached his shoulders. Keith was kicking and splashing water until Lance's chest was soaked.

"Stop struggling, Keith!" He yelled, but the baby kept splashing water and struggling on Lance's hands.

"Lance?" Hunk asked.

"Someone, put bubble bath on the water!" Lance yelled trying to keep Keith inside the water and at the same time stop him from drowning.

Shiro granbbed the bath product from a shelf above the sink and let some of it drop into the bathtub.

Pink bubbles started to from into the surface of the liquid's surface and Keith stopped struggling to admire the increasing amount of bubbles forming in around him. He giggled. Lance sighed. The boy was completely soaked, even his face and hair.

"Guys, one of you bring shampoo." He asked and Hunk put a little amount of the product and started rubbing Keith's wet hair, while the kid played with the bubbles, then Shiro helped to washed it, and hen Keith was finally clean, Lance took him out of the bathtub and wrapped him on a white towel.

The three paladins got out of the bathroom and found Pidge waiting for them in the bedroom. Carefully and quickly, Lance put Keith on the bed, dried him with the towel, put him on a diaper and dressed him with new clothes that looked exactly the same as the other ones, apparently, all the clothes Coran had brought were the same.

After that, the green, black and blue paladins talked about what they would do if they were attacked with Keith like that, while Hunk cradled and fed Keith with another bottle.

"But if they attack, how will we form Voltron?"

"We'll have to scape."

"I guess so."

A voice echoed across the castle when Allura called them "We have the cure! Please come to the control room."

"Let's go." Said Shiro, and all of them went to the room were Allura and Coran were, Hunk was carrying Keith, who looked around in amazement as they walked along the hallways.

At last, they reached the control room, were the two lateens were waiting. Allura was holding a feeding bottle, filled with a blue liquid. 

"I'm glad to see that Keith is still alive and healthy." She said very seriously. "I knew I could leave him in your hands, Shiro."

Said man scratched the back of his neck. "Actually, it was Lance." Allura raised a eyebrow at the blue paladin. "Siblings." Was all Lance said.

"Why are you only wearing your jumpsuits?" The princess asked. "We were bathing Keith." Hunk replied. "Oh, that's good." The princess didn't really know what to say. "Anyways, we have the cure. We started it from the flowers, we are certain that it will work, it's an old formula developed by the alteans. The only problem it's that it will make Keith go back to his age across seven days and he will regain his memories according to the age he is, so it will confuse him a lot."

"You mean, he's going to go through babyhood, childhood and adolescence in seven days?" Speculated Pidge.

"I fear so."

"No way." Lance say. "We are going to have to babysit Keith fir seven days?"

"Actually, after the third day we won't need to be taken care of." Corn pointed out.

"Why is this happening to me?" Lance complained.

"This is your fault, Lance." Pidge replied back. Lance pouted and looked away.

"Whatever."

Keith laughed. "He's so cute!" Exclaimed Allura. "May I carry him?" She asked Hunk. "Sure."

Allura handed Coran the bottle and walked to Hunk. "Hi, Keith, I'm Allura." She told the kid softly, Keith grabbed her finger.

"A-lll-a" Keith repeated and Allura gasped dn smiled. She picked up the baby in a sitting position. "And that's Coran." She said and turned around so Keith could see the man who was looking at him back. "Ccc-an." The red haired man smiled softly. 

Keith looked again at Allura and reached with his tiny hand to touch her long, silver hair. The altean giggled softly. Then, Keith grabbed her hair softly and... put it on his mouth to chew it.

"Keith!" Allura gasped and everyone looked at them with surprise or snickered. "Keith, let go of it!" But the kid ignored her.

Shiro sighed and walked to Coran. He grabbed the bottle and walked to Allura. "Come on, Keith, it's time for your medicine." He said, and fed Keith the bottle, while Allura cradled him. When the kid finished it, Shiro softly wipped the excess of blue liquid from the baby's lips with his black glove.

Behind him he heard snickering and Hunk's voice saying "Awwww..." He turned around with a confused expression. "What?"

Pidge was the one who answered. "You two look like a couple with a baby." He stated and Lance laughed softly and covered his mouth to stop himself.

Allura and Shiro blushed intensely. Shiro took a step away from Allura and avoided her eyes, while the princess stared at Pidge wide-eyed and obviously scandalized.

She cleared her throat and Lance managed to stop laughing. "So someone needs to stay with Keith tonight, he's too young to stay alone on his bedroom." The paladins glanced at each other trying to guess who would take the responsibility. Shiro sighed. "I'll do it." 

"Good. Now you better go to sleep, you all look very tired." The princess ordered.

"Sleep? But it can't be that late, right?" Pidge asked, she had though that it was still early, they hadn't even had lunch! 

"It has been ten hours since you woke up." The princess replied.

The paladin's moth's hang open. They couldn't believe they had spent so much time taking care of Keith. They had been so busy they hadn't have time to even be hungry.

"I'm not even hungry." Hunk said and went to his room.

Pidge justo went away to search for her laptop. Lance walked towards the hallway that conduced to his bedroom.

He was the only one who had actually noticed how much time had passed. He had done most of the work of taking care of Keith, yes, he was used to babysit his siblings, but that didn't mean it ever got less tiresome. It got easier after some time, but it was still mentally and physically exhausting. 

Lance went into his room, changed into his pajamas, finally free of his wet jumpsuit, and went to his bathroom to put on a beauty mask. At last, he got into bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

 

 

Shiro left the control room with a sleepy Keith on his arms. He arrived to Keith's room and sat on the bed still cradling the kid. Slowly he put him on the bed, resting his head on the pillow and next to the wall, so he wouldn't fall. The baby was already sleeping. Shiro then stood up and ran to his room. As fast as he could, he changed into black pajama pants and a grey t-shirt and ran back to Keith's room as if his life depended on it. Luckily, the kid hadn't moved while he had been gone. Shiro then lied on the bed and fell asleep.

 

Four hours later, while all the castle was sleeping, a crying Keith woke Shiro up. The door of the room was closed so it probably wouldn't wake up anyone else. With a sigh, shiro stood up, still sleepy, and grabbed a feeding bottle from the box, somehow it was still warm. He cradled Keith and fed him until the baby pushed the bottle away. He rocked Keith until he felt asleep again and put him back on the bed and he himself went to sleep again.

 

During the night, Keith woke up Shiro four more times, crying. Two were to change his diapers, one for food and the last one just because he couldn't sleep and Shiro had to sing him a lullaby in Japanese and rock him until he felt asleep again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I hope the characters were not too OOC, and please review!


	3. Hide and Seek (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Keith is a three-year-old and he really wants to play hide and seek with the team. How will that turn out?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I have very few time to do this today, but I want to update, so that's why I will be dividing this in two parts.

The next day, Lance opened his eyes and blinked a couple times in the darkness of his room. Suddenly, the events of the previous day came back to his memory and he stood up and ran towards the red paladin's room. Lance knew how difficult it could be to take care of a baby and that it was very probable that Shiro had gotten into trouble. He hoped that trouble wasn't some mess he would have to clean.

After what seemed hours of running, but were actually seconds, the blue paladin reached the door to Keith's room. Still on his pajamas and beauty mask, he opened the metal door and went in. Surprisingly, the lights were on and the first thing he noticed was Shiro lying on the floor next to the bed, sleeping. At least, there wasn't any evident mess. Shiro had really dark bags under his eyes and his mouth was sightly opened. However, what stood out the most was the black marker lines under the man's nose ,that looked like a mustache, nd the happy face on his left cheek.

Lance glanced at the wall in front of the bed for the first time and saw a little kid sitting on the floor in front of the wall and staring back at him. Keith had the same galra features that he had as a baby, but somehow his pupils yellow eyes seemed to be filled with wonder and _understandment,_ and something told Lance that Keith was staring at him directly in the eyes, even if he still had no idea of how to figure out were Keith was glancing at.

The kid blinked a couple times and his eyes widened, a grin made it's way to his face and he started giggling. He covered his mouth with his hand but didn't stop.

Lance raised an eyebrow. "What are you laughing at?"

Keith stopped giggling and talked for the first time in two days. "I'm sorry, sir. Your face..." He didn't need to add anything else. Lance immediately realized that he was still wearing his greenish beauty mask, and, apparently, even as a three-year-old. Keith found that funny.

The he noticed something else.

"Did you just call me  _sir_ ?"

Of course, Lance's priority was the way in which Keith had addressed him and not that one of the paladin's was a little kid or that Shiro was sleeping on the ground with drawings on his face.

Little Keith raised and eyebrow. "Errr... Yes? I don't know who you is, sir, so I called you that." The he stopped for a couple seconds and cocked his head sightly to the right. "Are you deaf, sir?" He asked honestly.

Lance decided to ignore the question. So Keith actually had no memories, Allura had said so, but he had not actually thought about what that really meant, he hadn't really thought of it as a real possibility. Lance had no idea of how to deal with an amnesic three-year-old red paladin.

That's when he saw the drawings on the wall behind Keith and the markers and crayons on the floor around Keith There were drawing of a woman and a black haired kid that in some had cat-like ears and purple skin and in some others was just a normal human boy. There was also a drawing of a man lying down with Zs coming out of his mouth, he looked a lot like Shiro. The woman had black eyes and dark hair that fell down to her waist. The blue paladin wondered if she was Keith's mom. He never talked about his family, but he never talked about being a galra either. Lance felt that he never knew Keith at all, when he thought he had figured him out, it turned out that he had a lot more secrets that he had believed possible.

He looked again at the kid and asked in the tone he used with his little siblings. "Is that your mom?"

Keith turne around to see what was Lance referring to and turned around again to face him. He grinned again. "That's mommy!", he said excitedly, in a way that Keith had never spoken before. "Do you know where mommy is?"

That was exactly what Lance had been trying to figure out, he had thought that Keith was an orphan or that he didn't have good relations with his family, he didn't seem to miss earth at all. But what if he was wrong? Lance was suddenly very nervous, and not knowing what else to do, he asked, "Do you?"

Keith's eyes narrowed sightly, he blinked and frowned. It was obvious that he was worried. "I-I can't... don't re-remember..." Anguish and distress were evident in his voice and he seemed about to have a panic attack. "It's all blurry..." The his yellow eyes widened. "Where's mommy?!!!" He almost yelled.

"I-I don't know." Lance knew how to deal when his siblings cried because of something childish, but he didn't know what to do with a kid who actually had a reason to cry for.

Tears started to form in the corner's of Keith's eyes. Lance knew that if he didn't do something in the next twenty second he would start to cry.

"But I'm sure she is okay!" He hoped it was true and that Keith didn't notice the insecurity in his supposedly reassuring voice.

Keith blinked, trying to stop the tears from falling, but a couple slid down his face. He sniffed and asked in a small, hopeful voice "You sure?" His eyes were still teary, his lower lip and voice quivered and his cat-like ears were lowered in shame. Lance couldn't help but think it was cute.

"Yeah, I'm sure."  _I'm such a liar._ He smiled warmly and ruffled the kid's hair , just like he did with his little brothers. "Now let's get you dressed so we can go meet the other guys?"

Keith's ears raised in curiosity and he cocked his head to the left and sniffed. "Other guys?"

"You'll see."

Lance started walking towards the bed, knowing that Keith would follow him. Keith stood up and grabbed the teen's hand, making him look down in surprise. "What's your name?" That brought Lance a weird sensation, like a dejavu.

_So I guess we'll have to start from zero._ "The name's Lance."

Keith nodded. "Lance. Mine's Keith." 

Lance decided to don't confuse the kid saying that he already knew his name. "Nice to meet you, Keith." Said kid smiled.

Lance glanced at Shiro, who was still sleeping on the floor and saw the bow with toys next to the bed. That's probably where the crayons had come from.

He decided that Shiro deserved to sleep as long as he wanted to, after what probably had been one of the worst nights of his life. He walked towards the voice in which clothes were stored, and Keith let go of his hand and stood still, staring at him.

Lance found a pair of black mini pants and a small grey t-shirt for Keith. "Do you know how to dress yourself and... go to the bathroom?" Keith nodded and Lance gave the clothes to the currently naked kid who put them on really fast for a kid his age. He was either way a very smart kid or it was a galra thing to develop faster. Maybe both.

When he finished, he yelled "Ready!" happily and grabbed Lance's hand again, the blue paladin wondered why happy little Keith had grown up into a Keith that tried to hide his feeling, stayed away from people and had had anger issues. Before going out of the room, he glanced at the drawing of Keith's mom and hoped he was wrong.

Lance turned off the lights and closed the door. With Keith holding his hand, they went to the blue paladin's room.

As soon as they went in, Lance looked the door, so Keith wouldn't run away as little kids usually do, and told him to wait until he changed his clothes. Lance took a quick shower and put on his normal clothes. When he got out of the bathroom, instead of a galra kid he found a human boy sitting on his bed.

For half a minute he just stared at the kid and the kid stared back at him, Lance wasn't able to react. The boy had the same black hair, but his skin was, well, normal skin and his eyes had pupils with purplish irises.

"How did you...?" Lance wasn't able to finish the sentence.

"What, this?" In less than three seconds, Keith's skin turned to light purple and his pupils disappeared in the yellow that saturated to appear at the edges of his eyes, his ears elongated like a cat's . Three seconds later, the process had reversed and Keith sat in front of Lance in his human form.

_So I guess this is what normal means for me now,_ Lance thought.

"Why did you change back? Do you like your... human form more?" Of all the questions Lance had, that seemed the most appropriate to ask a little kid.

Keith looked insecure for some seconds, like if he was trying to decide if he would answer the question of not and finally spoke. "No, I like the other more, but mommy says that I shouldn't show it to people and that I should like did the most." 

Lance decided to keep asking, "Why do you like it more?"

"I... hear thinks and see better and I fell..." He seemed to be searching for a word that described the feeling " free... Like this" he glanced down at himself, "I felt trapped, I don't like to hide the other form."

wThat confession made Lance felt really bad for Keith. If he felt trapped as a human, who knows how uncomfortable he had been feeling in Voltron, having to hide who he was from everyone?

"Then, why don't you stay in your other form for now?"

"I trust you, but I don't know the other guys yet." 

Lance let kind go honored that Keith had decided to trust him after so little time. "Well, errr... do you want to go know?"

Keith nodded and jumped out of the bed, he grabbed Lance's hand again and the two of them went to the control room.

When they arrived, everyone, except Shiro was there, and they turned to look at them. Pidge was the first one to speak. "Wait. When did Ke-" Before she could finish, Lance cleared his throat very loudly.

"Guys, this is Keith and he has no idea of what he is doing here and his memory is blurry. Maybe you can help us to find out?" The words were forced but everyone got the message.

"Oh, right." It was Pidge.

_Keith_ has _no memories._

"So, um, Keith, I'm Hunk and this is Pidge and Allure, and Coran." He pointed the each person as he spoke. 

Allura walked to Keith and kneeled in front of him. "Hi, Keith, nice to meet you." Keith just blinked and looked up at Lance, "Are these the other guys?" Everyone was looking at Lance. "Yeah, you can trust them." "Ok."

"So, Keith, do you want to play something?" Allura asked.

Keith smiled. "Yeah! hide and Seek!" 

"I used to love that game!" Hunk said and Pidge just stared at him. "What?" "Well, I guess it isn't that boring." the girl admitted. 

"It's been centuries since I last played it." Coran said.

"So it's decided, we will play hide and seek." Allura added. "Lance, where's Shiro" 

"Oh, he's sleeping." Allura seemed to understand.

"Weel, I'll start counting." Corn declared. "All the castle is valid." 

Everyone nodded.

Coran walked to one of the walls and started. "One, two, three..."

Everyone ran away as fast as they could, still holding Lance's hand, Keith ran, pulling Lance with him with a strength that little kids weren't suppose to have.

The game had begun.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who reviewed!


	4. Hide and Seek (Part 2)

For Coran, finding Hunk was pretty easy, he was hiding behind the kitchen counter, just where he had expected the yellow paladin to be. Hunk groaned when he was found and after that, stayed with Coran to help find the others.

Allura and the mice were hiding inside one of the pods which was inside the ground. When she was found, the princess laughed like a little girl and, like Hunk, followed Coran around. The action brought memories to the altean, of a white-haired happy little girl and her father.

They found Pidge below the dinning room table, she seemed somehow offended that she had been found before Lance.

 

\--------------<<<<<>><<<>>>\---------------------------

"Wait! Stop running" Keith dragged the blue paladin through the hallways, and Lance had lost all sense of orientation.

Keith pouted. "You're too slow, they are gonna find us." Keith kept pulling Lance forward, and while the older was heaving and trying to keep the pace, Keith didn't seem affected at all.

They kept running for what for Lance seemed ages, but were actually less than ten minutes, slowly, Keith started to transform into his galran form, his ears moved when he caught faint noises coming from the rooms they passed. He seemed to take the game way too seriously.

"You'll make me lose." He said, and just like that, let go of Lance's hand and ran very vastly away from him. Lance stopped, and blinked. Then he realized he had just let a kid running around the castle of lions and tried to flow Keith, but they were too many hallways and he had no clue where the kid had gone to.

Somehow, he ended up in a hallway near the kitchen where the rest of the team was. "Lance, you know you are supposed to hide, right?" Asked Pidge as she raised an eyebrow.

Lance rolled his eyes. "I know, but I lost Keith."

"Weren't you some kind of expert in babysitting?" She replied, accusingly. Lance blushed and looked away. He knew very well it was his fault, if he couldn't even catch a kid, how was he supposed to help save the universe?

"Yeah.... sorry." He whispered the last part, but everyone could hear it. They were surprised, Lance was not someone that apologized that easily.

"It's alright Lance, we'll divide and search for him." Said Allura. Everyone knew it was more of an order than a suggestion. " we'll meet at the control room" she added.

And everyone headed in different directions.

\------------------<<<<<>>>>>\------------------------

Half an hour later, no one had seen Keith.

Lance had gone back to the red paladin's room (where Shiro was still snoring), his own room, the power room, and searched in numerous hallways, but the kid seemed to have banished.

He was considering heading to the control room to see if anyone had had any luck, thought he doubted it, when, in the deep silence, he heard someone breathing. Someone that was definitely not him.

Not being sure why, he moved quietly to a hidden, dark corner behind a column and saw Keith curled into a ball in the floor.

He was sleeping, making almost no noise. His ears were relaxed and his tongue was sticking out.

lance remembered something he had read somewhere about cats kidding in small places to sleep.

So now Keith was a cat.

_Great._

He didn't want to wake him up, looking so pageful as he was, but he had to take him to the control room. So, with agility gained after years of experience, he slowly picked up Keith and put him in something like  sitting position. Keith stirred but didn't wake up.

When they arrived to the control room, everyone was already there, sitting around, looking impatient, some genuinely worried. 

"You found him!" Hunk yelled the obvious, not noticing that keith was sleeping. The bot tensed and woke up, he turned around, still in Lance's arms, and his eyes widened before he immediately morphed into his human form. He looked alarmed.

"Keith, there's no need to hide it." Allura stated gently and everyone nodded. Keith seemed unsure for a second before he smiled brightly. 

"Then, I won!"

Coran chuckled and glanced at Allura who didn't noticed. Memories of a happy girl, and her father playing hide and seek in the castle of Altea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took so long, and I'm sorry this is so short. I think this is the worst chapter so far. Sorry
> 
> Anyways, I would like to know if you have any suggestions for the next chapters in which Keith will be five, seven, nine, twelve, and fourteen.


	5. Training and... dinosaurs?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team goes to train, Keith loves dinosaurs, and space goop is not his favorite food.

After the game, the team ate some space goop, which Keith didn’t like at all and spent most of the time making disgusted faces, except when Hunk was looking because he didn’t want to offend the samoan’s feelings.  
Half way through the dinner, Shiro finally came out of Keith’s room and went to the dinning room to say he was heading to the training deck. After that, everyone went to their rooms. Pidge went to hers like every other day, Coran thanked Hunk for the goop and went to check some of the castle’s engineers; Allura smiled warmly at Keith before crossing the door way and Hunk asked Keith how the food was to which he very politely replied that it was “good.”  
Everyone just assumed Lance would take Keith to his room. So the blue paladin and the kid walked to half galran’s bedroom.  
He gave Keith some things to change and let the room, looking it.

Lance spent the next three hours staring at the ceiling and trying to sleep. At last, he decided to go check on Keith for something to do, so he quietly walked around the castle in which the lights were always on. The door to Keith’s darkened room opened and after glancing inside for one second, Lance closed it and stared at it, somehow in shook.  
He decided it would be better to just go to his room and go back to trying to sleep.  
He felt into an uneasy sleep with the image of a galra kid crying in front of his mother’s drawing burned on his mind.

———————-

Next morning when Allura called the paladins for training ( of course only the ones that were old enough) Lance literally jumped out of bed and headed as fast as he could to Keith’s room thinking o how idiotic it had been to leave the the kid alone, crying, with amnesia, in a strange place where he probably thought he had been kidnapped.

It was kind of surprising to find the boy sleeping on his bed, even though it the person under the covers looked bigger than the day before. Lance wondered if he was ever going to get used to those abrupt changes.

“Errr… Keith? It’s time to wake up.” Keith better not remember all of that after he was back to normal because it surely was embarrassing.  
The figure under the sheets shifted and groaned. “Not yet, mom.”  
God no. There was no way.  
Angry and blushing, and offended, Lance pulled back the covers saying, “ You are going to wake up now, Keith, you hear me?”  
The five year old, in a pijama that looked a little bit too short for him, curled into himself. “It’s cold!”  
“Keith…” Lance warned.  
“But-“ he complained.  
Lance angrily went to the bathroom, made the shape of a bowl with his hand, filled it with water and returned to Ketih to let it fall on his face.  
The red paladin jumped out at the bed and stared at his wet t-shirt and then glared at Lance. “What’s wrong with you?!” The he blinked and looked around. “But- I was- Where am- You- you are Lance, right?” Lance couldn’t believe just how fast Keith had made up his mind and all the confusion that had to be going thought his head.   
“ So, you remember yesterday?” Lance asked, unsure of what to do now that Keith was up and that he had calmed down.   
“I think so, it’s weird, and confusing. I’ll just pretend it isn’t. I’m hungry.”   
“ok…….” replied Lance. He took a purple t-shirt and black pants that looked big enough for Keith and told him to go take a shower and change while he waited on the room.  
Keith was ready in quite an admirably amount of time, and they were heading to the kitchen in no time.   
There, the kid ate some more space goop for lack of another food, and followed Lance to the training deck.

 

 

Allura looked surprised to see Keith there “Oh” was all she said. The princess cleared her throat. “ Today you’ll focus on close combat. “ Everyone nodded, and Keith (in human form) looked curious.

Shiro went first while everyone waited in the control room. He fought three drones, and as expected, defeated all of them very easily.  
Hunk went next, and he took some more time than Shiro to defeat hologram of some things that looked like wolves.  
Next came Pidge, and she managed to take down two drones.  
Allura decided to train too, and she turned out to be very deadly with her staff.  
Finally, it was Lance’s turn and he didn’t fail to notice Keith almost inaudible “good luck” before he went to the arena.  
For some strange reason he just couldn’t understand, he had to fight something that looked like a velociraptor, and the freaking thing was freaking fast, still, the sharpshooter managed to take it down.  
Panting, he turned to the grass cabin to see how the others thought he had done and he saw Keith in galra form, smiling and literally jumping with his hands on the glass like if there was something very amusing behind it.  
Frowning, Lance went to the control room and discovered the reason of Keith’s excitement.  
“That was a dinosaur! A velociraptor! Can you make another appear again, princess?” He looked to happy and excited.  
“A dinosaur?” Asked Allura. “Oh! You mean the beast Lance fought! I can, but I cannot remember it’s name.”  
“Lance, that was so cool! You fought a dinosaur!” He congratulated him, making Lance feel as if he had done something great. “ I want to too! Can I? Please?” Until that moment Lance hadn’t actually registered that Keith was actually a little kid.  
“Keith, you are too young, maybe when you are older.” Shiro said.  
“How old?” Keith, shoot back, obviously not liking the answer.  
“Nine.” Stated the black paladin.  
“Nine?!” Everyone shouted at Shiro, alarmed.  
“Shiro, I think that is still too young…” started Allura, but Shiro interrupted her, and said somehow sad “Princess, please trust me that for Keith, nine is not too young.”  
Said paladin stared at Shiro like if trying to decipher something.  
Trying to break the ice, Keith added “I really like dinosaur at home I have sheets with them that mom bought for me and-“ Keith stopped mid sentence and looked somehow horrified. “Mom…” He whispered. “Where’s mom?” He asked alarmed, but no one could answer him.  
“I want to go back to my room.” He whispered. And grabbed left Lance before pulling him along to his room, to which he somehow had learned the way to.

The team stared at the door.   
“ It’s better if you leave him alone.” Shiro broke the silence.  
“You know something you are not telling us.” Pidge stated. “ But I guess it’s not your place to tell.”  
Shiro nooded and everyone awkwardly went to do their things. Good thing there were only four days left. And then maybe, they would not the truth. Even if some of them were starting to thing that it was better if they didn’t know.

 

  
Lance was being dragged by Keith, while silent tears rolled down the kid’s face. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to say. It was Keith, and he was crying, what could he do?  
What could I do?, he repeated himself as they walked back to the red paladin’s room.

The door opened, and Keith jumped into the bed and put the covers over himself.   
“I miss her.” He said with a shaky voice form under the sheets.  
Lance did the same that he had done when one of his little brothers had broken his arm and was crying. He sat on the bed, and put his hand comfortingly on Keith’s shoulder. “I know, I’m sorry.”   
He pretended to ignore the sobs and he stayed there foe a while to show with his presence that he cared.  
When it was time to sleep, he said goodnight to the bundle under the covers and went to his room, with a bad feeling on his gut.

 

 

It was midnight, when his door opened and someone threw himself on his bed and hugged him.  
It took Lance a moment to understand that he was not being attached and that the purple figure hugging him, was too small for an attacher an also crying.

“Lance,” he said with an strangled voice, “she’s dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I didn't update for like, two months! I had a writers' block but I'm trying to come back for this Valentine's day!
> 
>  
> 
> As usual, please send me your ideas and comment!


	6. What He Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lance”, he said with a strangled voice, “She’s dead.”

Keith was shaking and sobbing. Lance hugged him tightly. He had seen it coming, the way Shiro had acted, how much Keith seemed to love and miss his mom, and how he had never mentioned her before. Something had happened that had made Keith drift apart from his mom, he just had hoped that it hadn’t happened because he had lost her.  
Hugging the boy, the small innocent boy, he felt his heart broke and his eyes became watery. But Lance knew he had to be strong and blinked, successfully stopping the tears form falling.  
He couldn’t imagine loosing any of his siblings and much less his mother, who always managed to be there for them and to care for and love each one of them.  
And the worse was that it wasn’t a nightmare he could brush off and tell Keith it was going to be okay. Because it wouldn’t, and Lance knew that even with all the magic and crazy stuff they had faced, people didn’t come back from the death.

“Mom…” Keith whimpered, and broke into sobs once again.

Lance realized that Keith had had to dealt with it alone. Something told him that his father hadn’t been there for him, but that left no one else. Lance didn’t want to believe the truth. He didn’t want to admit it, but he couldn’t deal with it alone.

He picked Keith up as he sobbed on his shoulder and walked as fast as he dared towards Keith’s room. The boy was much bigger and heavier than the previous day but it wasn’t something Lance couldn’t manage. There, he sat in front of the paint wall and prayed that he had taken the right decision.  
Slowly, he set Keith on the ground and saw as he sniffed and looked around until he saw the wall. The purple kid bit his lip and Lance knew he was trying not to cry again.

They stayed in silence for a couple minutes staring at the wall in the faint light that came from the hallway.

“They killed her. Father’s family.” Keith started, his voice devoid of emotion, he probably was in shook. “They came out of nowhere to the shack where we were hiding and broke the door and- She- She told me to run” his voice was filled with emotion once again. “I should have stayed, I could have helped her, but I hid… I’m- I’m a coward!”  
Lance hugged Keith again as he broke into frustrated sobs, clenching his fists.  
“ Why do I have to look like this! He was never home and he got her killed! Mom’s family didn’t like me because of it, that’s why she had to hide with me! It’s his fault! It’s-“ His voice shook “ It’s my fault. I killed her.” He whispered so softly that Lance wouldn’t have hard him if it hadn’t been said right next to his ear. Lance really was trying to understand but he was lost. The only thing he knew was that seven- year- old Keith had seen his mother been murdered, that it was his father’s fault, and that it wasn’t Keith’s fault.  
Keith then took a shaky breath and pulled away from Lance, standing and he moored into his human form.  
“But that happened I while ago, I remember now.” He said absently “I’m sorry for this.”  
“It’s not your fault.” Even thought the statement was whispered it resounded in the empty hallways.  
Keith stayed quiet.  
“I’m supposed to be in an orphanage, this is so confusing… What happened to me?”  
The blue paladin’s blood ran cold when his fears were confirmed. Keith had lived in an orphanage. He had thought it had been difficult to get into the Garrison being an average cuban boy, he had worked hard for the half scholarship, but he couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for Keith to get from the orphanage to the country’s top academy especially when they dejected almost every cadet with a dark past. But those weren’t the thoughts he was supposed to have at the moment. He had an answer to give to Keith.

“You are sixteen, but, there was an accident and you de-aged.” He just couldn’t get the part about it being his fault out when Keith was looking at him with those puffy, hurt-filled eyes. “But if I explained it would make it all more confusing, maybe when you are olde-“  
“Everyone’s always telling me that.”  
Lance was about to said something else when Keith sighed in tired way no seven-year-old was supposed to, and glared at Lance before agreeing. “I suppose I can’t way.” He couldn’t hide the annoyance in his voice and that made Lance think that he was actually the same Keith he knew.

“You should sleep as much as you can, there’s hours left until the others wake up, unless you want me to call them or-“  
“No, it’s okay.”  
It was probably better to leave it for the next day when they were well rested. “I’ll go to my room then.”  
Keith looked like he wanted to argued but contained himself. “What?”  
“I’ll have nightmares, but don’t worry, I’m used to them.” If Keith hadn’t said the last sentence Lance would have actually considered not worrying about it.  
“Alright, let’s go.” Lance started walking toward the hall.  
“What?” He heard form behind.  
“You’re staying at my room, I won’t leave you here in the dark having nightmares and crying on your own. Don’t glare at me like that, you know it’s true.” Keith’s puffy red eyes made his glare a lot less scarier. “You coming or what?”  
“O-Ok.”

Keith followed Lance to his room and Lance went into the bed and lied down, leaving a space for Keith. At that moment, he was on one of his siblings.  
Keith stared at the bed and at Lance, unsure.  
“Are you going to stand there all night? Because I need to get my beauty sleep.” Keith smiled at that and lied down on the bed, tensed. The older boy was glad that he was able to hide the concern when speaking.  
Lance stared at the ceiling, knowing well that Keith was all but relaxed.  
“If you sleep like that you’ll wake up more tired than now.”  
Keith gulped and shifted until he seemed to be comfortable and relaxed. Lance sat and pulled the covers over them and without thinking, more by instinct, he ruffled Keith’s hair and said “Good, night, lil bro.” Before he remembered he was in space and not with Chris. He was embarrased, but Keith didn’t complain.

After a couple seconds he replied back. “Good night.”

Fifteen minutes or so passed in silence.  
“Is this what having a big brother feels like?” Keith whispered very quietly to himself, thinking the other boy was already asleep.  
Lance couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the words and tried to stay still so Keith wouldn’t know he had heard him.

And eventually, they fell asleep.

————————————————————————————

The door to Lance’s room suddenly opened and Pidge went inside.  
“Hey, Lance, I think it’s time you go to check on-” She stopped when she saw the two boys sleeping” Keith.” She rolled her eyes and smiled, glad he hadn’t woken them up.  
She went to tell the other paladins everything was under control.

An hour later, the boys woke up when the younger one started to sneeze repeatedly.


	7. Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance touched keith's forehead, he was burning.
> 
>  
> 
> He found a knife and a diary, and maybe it had the answers he needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented in the previous chapter and I'm really sorry I took long to update. Every time I received a comment I really wanted to write this chapter but didn't have the time. Exams are over but now I have lots of homework.

Lance woke up, startled. Next to him, Keith was sitting up sneezing and coughing. His face was flushing a dark purple, his eyes were sleepy, and his cat ears were flattened against his head.

“Lance,” he started weakly “it’s happening again.” And he coughed again.

The blue paladin had no idea what he was referring to but he knew, for experience, that kids normally didn’t become that sick in matter of hours, meaning it was probably some kind of galran or space flu that he really didn’t want to have to deal with.  
  
“It has happened before?” Keith nodded, sniffing. Lance touched his forehead and jerked his hand away hissing.  
“God, Keith, you´re burning!” Something was seriously wrong, he was pretty sure it was humanly impossible to have a temperature tat high. Keith just groaned and lied down. “I’ll go search for Allura, she’ll know what to do.” Keith didn’t answer.

  
Lance ran out of the room and to the mess hall, were everyone was having breakfast.  
“Hey, Lance, where’s-“ Pidge stopped herself when she saw Lance’s expression.  
“Lance?” Allura inquired.   
He grabbed her hand and pulled her running back to his room. He could hear the footsteps of the others behind them, following probably thinking that Lance had gone insane.

The metal door was still open and he rushed inside. Allura was panting, and not really comfortable running with her dress. “What is it?”   
He pointed towards Keith, out of breath. The cat eras were gone, and his skin had turned a aggravating shade of red around the cheeks.

Allura gasped. “There’s no way…” She went to the bed and touched his forehead, but unlike Lance, didn’t reject the temperature. “This sickness is supposed to only fact alteans, I don’t understand…”  
Lance had recovered enough to speak again. “Will the pods work?”  
“Yes, of course. But it’s curious how it is affecting him, I’ve never heard of a galra who suffered it.”  
Lance was growing impatient. “Shouldn’t we take him to the pots now? He seriously burning…”

Allura smiled softly. “Oh, don’t worry. Based on your range of body temperatures this one is very high for you but for alteans is not dangerous, it’s far enough from our limit, he’ll be okay.” Lance couldn’t help but sigh in relief. God, then I’ll take him there.  
She nodded. “I will be waiting.” And left. He could hear her talking with the others in the hall, but he wasn’t interested in the conversation.

  
He moved to the bed and picked Keith up bridal style, he was much heavier the the day before.  
The black haired boy opened his unfocused eyes and squinted at the light. That’s when Lance noticed the purple spots on his arms and neck. As if reading his mind, Keith spoke. “ I can’t control it, it always happens when” sneeze “I get sick.” He tried not to think about Keith in the orphanage or alone in the desert with fevers that high.

He walked vastly but steady trying not to disturb the kid who seemed to have fallen into an uneasy sleep. Allure and the team were waiting there and the instructions for the treatment had been already given to the healing pot. Keith was out inside, and the glass closed isolating him from the world.  
“How long will it take?” But that point he didn’t care if the others noticed the preoccupation on his voice.   
“A day, more or less.” Coran was the one to answer. “It’s a common sickness that alteans suffer at least once on their lives. It’s quite interesting how it survived all this years.”  
“I had it once, it’s quite uncomfortable but not dangerous.” Allura continued.” He’ll be alright, Lance.”

The others stayed there for a while, talking, but he just couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying. His mind seemed to be somewhere else.  
He glanced at the pot more times than he could count, expecting every time for it to open. But it didn’t.  
He sat there for hours in the cold metal floor. the others left, he didn’t notice.   
hunk brought him food and he ate it, not mentioning the awful taste of the goop.

  
He remembered the time Mina fell from a tree and had a concussion. He hadn’t been there when it happened. but he had spent all the night with her in the hospital, holding her hand, and calming her down when she woke up, disoriented. She was eight back then and he was fourteen.   
it seemed like it had been a whole life ago. Everything had changed so much since then.

He missed them.

The laughts, the conversations, the games, even the food.  
He wondered if he would ever see them again.

 

  
At last, he decided to go to his room and put on some proper clothes. There was nothing he could do anymore.  
So he walked there, took a long, nice shower, put on his usual clothes, and headed to the kitchen to eat whatever meal it was by then. It was difficult to tell time on space but he was hungry and that was all he needed to know.  
Hunk gladly cooked a weird, delicious looking food with whatever ingredients they had and , after eating, he headed bak to the pods.

When he arrived, Shiro and Allura were there holding a dizzy looking Keith so he wouldn’t fall.  
“I think you should go to sleep” She was saying. “I know this can be very draining.” She smiled, Keith hummed in agreement.   
Keith saw him and the others did two. The purple spots had disappeared.  
“There were no complications. I think it would be better if you rested for what’s left of the day, Lance, you have been very…” She glanced at Keith “supportive lately.”

Seeing Keith was okay after all, and being really tired, Lance thought about how nice it would be to put on a beauty time and spent some time taking care of himself for real.

“All yours, Shiro.” He said, and left to his room once again.

Sure enough, lying with beauty mascara while listening to music was very relaxing.

  
———————————————————————————————————————

  
The man, Shiro, helped him get to his room.  
He seemed familiar, even more than Lance, but he couldn’t tell where he had seen him.  
Lately everything was all a big confusing mess. Maybe the next day he would remember who Shiro was, maybe he would remember who _he_ was.  
The man organized his room and put all the baby toys and crayons in the boxes while he took a shower. He showed him the clothes his size so he would choose. That gave him the feeling that probably Shiro knew him better that the rest of the team, Voltorn?, no, Votron?

A couple days ago he had been playing hide and seek, he had seen the death of his mother vividly the day ago, and he had sobbed in the shirt of a boy that should have been a stranger but somehow wasn’t. It felt like if all his memories were there, but he couldn’t reach far enough to unlock them.

Shiro stopped to look at the drawings in the wall and his face became sad. He knew something else that the other didn’t. Still, he didn’t ask.  
He wished him good night and left.

He was tired, really tired. But he was curious and he had the feeling that some of the answers could be in the room.

He touched the panels on the walls and searched in the bathroom but there was nothing. Then he searched on his pillow and found two things. A knife and a diary. He scowled, it was embarrassing that his future self kept a diary.  
The knife was his father’s, he already knew it, he had had it since age five and had given hi a sense of purpose at the orphanage.   
Get into the Garrison, go to space, find him.  
Looking at the walls of the ship and judging by the control room it was far more advanced that the ones he had studied in books. Yes, he was in the space. The thing was that he wasn’t in a Garrison ship.  
The girl, Allura was like his mom’s family, and he doubted if he could trust her. I war, kind words were nothing. Shiro and Lance seemed like good guys, the only ones he could be sure to trust. If they trusted her, he might as well try.  
He was in outer space, in a unknown ship, with the people that had once rejected him. What had his future self gotten himself into?

He decided to open the diary. The writing was neat and the fist pages were yellowish, kind of old. It was a small black letter book, with lined pages. Three fourths of them were filled. He turned the pages quickly, without reading, and found some drawing and math problems after the middle of the diary or so. There were some of a lion and by the end some pretty good sketches of robots and drawn of planets and people. It looked more like a journal. Thinking about his ad drawing he wondered when he had learnt to draw like that.  
He turned the pages back to the begging and read some frases trying to cath the important information, because it would take hours to read all of it.   
For what he catches from the first part, he had gotten a scholarship for the Garrison.He had been the second best student on his year, and then on third year he had left it to search for Shiro, who had become his friend, and had disappeared in a mission. ‘Left’ was a way to say it, the other way was to say that he had been thrown out after trying to sneak into high security files.

He had lived in the desert for a year or so, trying collect pieces of the stories his mother had told him and information about the Kerberos mission.   
Shiro somehow came back and he took them to a cave where his investigations lead and found a lion that took them to space where they had to fight an alien race called the galra from conquering the universe.  
If he weren’t in the same ship the diary talked about, he would have thought that it was a fiction story he had written on his spare time.

It didn’t say anything about his transformations or the fact that the race they were fighting against was his own, and that lead him to the conclusion that his older self didn’t one his friends to know. He wondered what would be his reaction when he got back all his memories.

With hours ahead until it was time to ‘wake up’, and lots of questions that probably wouldn’t be answered because he was ‘too young’, Keith started to read the part about Voltron and the lions word by word.  
Needless to say, it was very interesting.  
He had a few pages to go when pain took over him and he blacked out.

———————————————————————————————

Someone was knocking in the door. “Keith? Do you want to go training?” It was Shiro.

He changed his clothes that were to short for him again, hid the diary and the knife, and went out wearing a black t´shirt, gray sweatpants and combat boots.

“Sure.” He answered smiling, now he had more of his memories back.  
Shiro had helped him, he had guided him and been like a brother. They had trained and studied together. He felt his heard sink when he remembered that his future self had lost him for a year. But his smile didn’t dissapear.

Shiro seemed a bit surprised by his reaction. “you remember, then?”   
Keith nodded. “You’re twelve, right? then you remember that time I kicked your butt in front of all your classmates.  
Keith tried to glare but he was still smiling. Something finally made sense.  
“that was not fair, you were like ten years older and I hadn’t trained properly!”  
“Well now I’m fourteen years older, fought for a year in an alien arena and have a robot arm. Your don’t stand chance.”  
Keith elbowed him softly and they started walking towards the training room.  
“I’m still a better pilot.” He said.  
“You got a point there.” Shiro chuckled and something told Keith he hadn’t in a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, please leave a comment, specially with things I should improve so I can make my writing better.


	8. Learning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance finds Keith training with Shiro and he is asked something he didn't expect at all.

The next day, Lance woke up feeling well rested, which wasn’t unusual for him excluding the last days. For a moment, he lied half awake thinking about breakfast and guessing what kind of cool training Allura would organize, then he remembered there was an amnesic preteen in the castle and he groaned.  
He couldn’t wait for Keith to be back to normal so his schedule could be back to normal too. Knowing there was nothing he could do about it, he got ready and went to the mess hall. Having some relaxing time and then remembering the stressful hours that were ahead was even worse than not having time for himself at all.  
Most of the team was at the table, eating and talking, but there was no sight of Keith of Shiro, which was weird because lately the black paladin had been acting weird.  
Pidge told him that they were at the training room and he remembered the promise Shiro had made Keith two days ago.  
So he went there and was amazed by what he found.  
Keith was sparring with Shiro, but the level of skill he was showing was not something usual for a twelve year old. He remembered how he always exceeded in combat training back then, but apparently he had been holding back.  
It was obvious that Shiro wasn’t fighting seriously, but still, Keith’s movements had something that Lance simply didn’t have, precision, confidence.  
It looked like some kind of action movie, and the way in which both of them seemed to be able to predict the others movements made him think that Shiro and Keith usually trained together, or at least they did when he was twelve.

Keith said something he couldn’t hear from behind the glass, and Shiro stopped, and went to the room Lance was in.  
He seemed surprised by his presence. “Oh, good morning.” And he pressed some buttons and moved a couple levers that made two robots appear in the room, at Keith’s sides.  
The sword looked a little too big for him, but it worked just perfectly when he used it to cut the robots’ heads off.  
Lance didn’t notice his mouth was open until Shiro commented, “Impressive, right?” He just nodded and shut his mouth, embarrassed.  
Keith then walked to the room, wiping sweat from his forehead, he went through the door and stared at Lance. “I remember you from the Garrison, Lance McLain, right? You got very high marks at shooting”.  
Lance was shocked. He always though he had been invisible for Keith in the Garrison, the top student that didn’t notice the ones below him, and the fact that Keith hadn’t even known his name when Shiro came back only confirmed it. Had it been an act?  
He realized that Shiro and keith were staring, expecting some kind of answer. “Yeah, that’s me.”  
Keith seemed satisfied with the answer. “Could you teach me? It’s not my best skill.”  
Lance blinked. “Yeah.”  
Shiro cleared his throat. “I can change the arena so you can use it for shooting.”  
“Thanks.”  
Feeling awkward, Lance went into the arena while Shiro pressed more buttons andKeith followed.  
Two later guns appeared in the middle of the room. Seeing keith holding one made him remember that he was still technically a kid an he had to convince himself that he was completely capable of using it and that he would probably be completely capable of kicking his butt if he tried to take the gun away.  
They trained in mostly silence, with some short comments from Lance about how to hold the gun or recommendations. Keith focussed easily and learnt quickly. He still had a long way to reach Lance’s level but he had improved since the beginning of the “class”.

When they exited the arena, Shiro was gone. It turned out that they had been training for more than six hours and had skipped lunch, which surprised Lance because he wasn’t the type to skip meals for training.

After that, Keith went to his room to shower and returned for food, Lance did the same but took a lot more time on doing so. by the time he was out of his room again, it was almost time of going to sleep again, and he was starving.  
Luckily for him, Hunk had saved some of his improved space goop recipe so he didn’t have to eat the original one.  
Keith came into the room talking with Shiro which made Lance curious but he didn’t ask the question that had been bugging him the whole day.  
And that’s when he asked about Voltron and if he could try to ride the lion.  
“Not today, Keith. Maybe tomorrow.” Was Shiro’s reasonable answer.  
“But Pidge’s fourteen.” Keith complained.  
“Still two years older, and a lot of more piloting experience. And she is also two years ahead in the academy.”  
Keith looked like he wanted to say something else but at the end didn’t.  
“Look, you are not ready for it yet.” Lance realized his mistake when Shiro looked at him wide-eyed. Keith mouth became a thin line and with a cold voice he said, “In twelve years I have seen more things that you have in sixteen, so stop calling me a kid.”  
The room seemed to be some degrees lower and a Shiver went up his spine.  
Keith turned around and headed to his room with contained anger.  
Shiro sighed. “You really shoudln’t have said that.”  
The blue paladin went into to hall.  
“Keith, buddy, I’m sorry.” He apologized just as Keith was going through the metal door.  
He wasn’t expecting the reaction he got.  
“Lance, I’m not you “buddy”!” He yelled and his skin started to turn purple and Lance knew he couldn’t control it. “I can’t remember it, okay?! And I’m don’t tell me it’s because I’m not ready, because you have no idea!” He closed his eyes and took a shaky breath stopping the transformation. “Just leave me alone.” He went in and the door slammed shut.  
Lance was frozen on the spot and didn’t know how to react, seeing Keith actually angry was not something usual, and it meant he had made a big mistake. He probably would have also been angry if he was told he was “not ready” after watching his mother been murdered. God, he was an idiot.  
It was better if he let things cool down, so he headed to his room, feeling guilty.

—————————————————————————————-

He hated it when he couldn’t control himself and he morphed without wanting too. It reminded him of how it was a curse, and how it wasn’t under his control.  
He shouldn’t have yelled at Lance, but it had felt so good just let it go, all the confusion and stress. The thing was that he hadn’t been that angry at what the blue paladin had said, and judging at what the diary said, Lance probably blamed himself for it.  
After hours of training he was very tired and his older self would probably deal with the problem better.  
He lied down with the light off, and pulled up the covers.

—————————————————————————————-

“The castle is under attack!” allure yelled and everyone in the castle could hear it.  
The black and purple ship didn’t stop shooting at them.

He didn’t remember how he was supposed to form Voltron, but hopefully the explanation given in the diary was enough. He found the white and red suit and it adjusted to his size. The directions given were accurate enough, and after sliding down a tunnel, he found himself in Red.  
He could only hope she would guide him.

“Keith?” The communicator spoke. “What do you think you are doing?!”


	9. Under Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith thinks he is ready to fight with Red, Shiro trusts in him, but maybe Lance was right when he told him he wasn't.

“Keith?” The communicator spoke. “What do you think you are doing?!”  
“Keith?”  
“Keith…” Shiro’s voice was a warning but not a scold.  
“I can handle this.” He assured, the paladins were surprised to hear how deeper his voice was compared to the previous day.  
“You are a great pilot and everything but I don’t think you should get into combat right now and-“  
“Lance,” Keith interrupted “I can do this.” He stated. He remembered; the boy who made friends easily and wanted way too much to be a pilot, the boy who scowled at him and frowned at the training exercises scores, the boy who tried way too hard. His voice softened. “Can you trust me in this?”  
There was silence for a few seconds. “Yes.” Keith smiled softly at the hint of worry in the blue paladin’s voice.  
“Guys, we are in the middle of a battle here…” Pidge pointed out, and it was enough to get the team back into focus.

I wasn’t the same, not yet, but it was a needed moment of normality that had been missing, more than usual, in the last few days.  
“Hunk, you and I will go by the sides, you go left.” Shiro instructed, and the team could almost see the yellow paladin nodding at the other side of the line. “Pidge, use camouflage to get above them and shoot them from there. Lance, attack from below.” He paused. “Keith, you’ll take down the big blaster that’s shooting at the castle.”

And with that, the team divided.

  
—————————————————————————-

Everyone seemed to know exactly what to do. Everyone except Keith.  
Yes, he knew how to pilot the lion to make it go forward towards the huge threatening alien ship, but he had no idea of what to do will all the other controls in the panel that looked nothing that the ones he was used to at earth. How was he supposed to move the legs go the lion? And, what if they needed to form Voltron?  
He had read in the diary it had taken some training and synchronization or something like that, what if he messed it all up?

He took a shaky breath and lowered the volume of his helmet so the others wouldn’t hear him, they didn’t need to know how lost he actually was, they probably had their own insecurities.  
Awkwardly, he cleared his throat.  
“You’re Red, right? I- I think you probably have noticed that I’m… different right now and I don’t really remember how to pilot you, so, I was wondering if you could help me? Give me some kind of guide? I mean, you did before, could you do it now, er, please?”  
If the lion heard him, it didn’t react, and he felt stupid for talking to it. He would have to do it by himself.

“Keith, you alright?” Shiro asked and he had to turn up the volume to answer a simple “yes”.  
If they knew how nervous he was they would probably send him back, and one paladin could be the difference between success or defeat, he would’t risk it.

They were approaching to the ship, energy that felt familiar surrounding it, the huge machine looked like a massive living creature.  
His target was just in the front of the ship, exposed, but protected by the lasers surrounding it and pointing at him, ready to attack.  
He gulped and took one deep shaky breath before Shiro shouted “Now!” And the lions leaped into action.  
Red’s movements were not as swift as the others’, he could easily see it, and the way he was flying felt unnatural, forced, the lion wasn’t trying to help him, and it was the best he could do, if only Shiro had allowed him to practice a little the day before…  
The lasers started shooting, and he did the best he could to avoid being hit, the exercises at the Garrison were nothing compared to them, hey were too fast, and he got hit more than a couple times.  
He turned the volume off again to not worry the others, and his eyes widened when a red light started flashing inside his cabin, the message was clear, he had to get out.  
He had been foolish, thinking he could fight with the lion, that he could help. Maybe Lance was right, he was too young, he couldn’t handle the pressure. Distressed tears rolled down his cheeks as he tried his best to avoid the lasers and reach his target.  
Finally, he was close enough and he fired at the big blaster. It was glowing, charging, and he doubted the lion could withstand being hit by it, he had to work fast.  
The lasers hit Red as he shoot with all the lion had at the machine. He heard the others talking on the communicator, unaware of what was happening, but he couldn’t make out the words, too focused on his goal.  
He attacked as fast as he could, and when he thought he was about to destroy the thing, it finished loading and a huge laser his the lion straight on.  
It didn’t send it flying away as he expected, but it shook it and shut it down. His body sprang forward but the seat belt stopped him, knocking the air out of him, and making him hit his head against his seat.  
For a moment, he lied there, confessed, in the darkness, glancing at the imposing figure of the ship. The voices of his team had been shut down with the lion and the sudden silence was accompanied by a buzzing on his ear.  
Keith blinked and the lion tried to turn on again but failed and the lights went off again, he could smell something burning, probably the engine or whatever impulsed it.

The lasers had stopped, and when Keith cleared his mind enough he noticed something. The lion was shut down, there was no oxygen.  
He closed his helmet but found it even more difficult to breath inside of it. His ship was dead, his suit was dead, the communication was dead, he was dead.  
He coughed and tried to hold his breath, save oxygen. Had the others noticed? The only thing he was sure of was that the things that looked like him, the things that killed his mother, would get him anytime.  
He was scared.

The silence was overwhelming and he had spent the longest two minutes of his life controlling how much air he wasted and waiting for something to happen. It didn’t.  
He just floated there in the dead lion wondering if that was how he was going to die, alone in the space. He didn’t really care, but his sixteen-year-old self did, and he wouldn’t let himself down, not when he had finally found a family. He wouldn’t fie on them.

He slammed his fist in the panel. “Wake up! We can’t go down without a fight! What about the other lions? What about Voltron? Did you like being trapped all those years? Come on, wake up!” There was no answer and he slammed his fist again, it was turning purple, but he didn’t really care, as long as he got the lion to react. Why did it had to be so stubborn? If Red had guided him they wouldn’t be in that situation.  
“Wake up!” He kicked the panel with all the strength he had. He got a response, but not the one he expected.  
A jolt of electricity hit him and there was no doubt that the lion had sent it. He was paralyzed for a minute, his mouth open in shook, and his hands twitched with sudden spasms. His whole body burned and there was a scream trying to scape his throat.  
He couldn’t believe it. He just wanted to lie don and cry.  
Red didn’t want him, she hated him, that’s why she didn’t help, she didn’t wan to. And he knew why, ad the answer stung.  
‘Because I’m like them.’  
He slowly regained control of his body, feeling hurt, not only physically but emotionally.  
He had known it his entire life, that he didn’t deserve happiness, that he was a monster. But there had always been a little bit of hope that he would find a way to achieve, if not happiness, his goals.  
He had just gained a family and the main reason they had accepted him was gone.  
Red had accepted him because she didn’t know what he was. But she hated him. Enough to risk being captured, enough to risk the rest of Voltron.  
His heart sunk. His eyes stung and he was shaking with despair, not making a sound. He wasn’t sure if he was having a hard time breathing because of crying, the electricity shook, or the lack of oxygen. Probably all.  
He got out form his seat, struggling with the seat belt in a lion that no longer was his, and had to use his bayard to cut himself free. When the galra found him, at least they wouldn’t find him tied.  
He fell to the floor as soon as he stood up in shaky that felt like jelly. His nerves and muscles were a mess and the ringing in his ears wouldn’t disappear.  
He sat against the back of the seat, not wanting to see when his enemies finally caught him.  
The red paladin wondered why and how his day had gone so wrong. If he had only listened to Lance. He was just a kid, he wasn’t ready, not even after all he had gone through. The other three paladins were also kids but at least they had more experience, he couldn’t even remember his own life.  
A sob escaped him and he refrained from doing so again. The lion wanted him to suffer but he wouldn’t give it that satisfaction.

He didn’t need to see what was happening to know what it meant when the lion started moving forward, being dragged back into captivity and to something he had yet to know.  
Keith’s heart beat rapidly. The lion stopped, hitting some surface, and the door opened.  
The needed air that reached his lungs was enough to distract him from the beast that handcuffed him, took his helmet and crushed it under on elf their boots, and dragged him. Out of the room, through dizzying halls.  
They threw him into an empty cell, with steel walls floor and ceiling, and the door closed, sealing him into a prison he had no way of getting out off, no bars and no light. Only his damaged obsolete suit and himself.  
That’s when he really wept.

———————————————————————————-

The next morning, or what probably was the next morning, he couldn’t tell, the door swung open and two tall figures stood in the doorway. He had been half- asleep and for a second he had thought he was back at the orphanage with two women in white and black clothes standing over him, calling him a demon.  
But the real demons were the ones towering over him at that moment, and he couldn’t help but flinch when one of them ordered, “Stand.”


	10. Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zarcon takes and interest in the younger red paladin and the druids are ordered to conduct some tests.

“So it’s true.” said the alien in the screen. “The red paladin has somehow become younger.”  
The galra speaking radiated power and confidence, and he could almost feel the respect, and fear, the guards holding him felt for him. Keith knew, without a shade of doubt, that it was Zarkon.

“Yes, my lord. The druids in the ship have already been instructed to take the corresponding tests to find the reason and find if it can be taken to our advantage.” Next to the throne of the emperor, a hooded white haired woman reported. Keith didn’t like her, it unnerved him more than Zarkon himself, but he couldn’t remember any mention of her in the diary. Had his future self met her or was it just a feeling?

“Proceed then. The ship should head now to Central Command.” And taking his order for granted, the screen turned black and Zarkon and the woman dissapeared.

Two nodded figures entered the room then. And to Keith’s disdain they walked to him. Suddenly the two guards holding him in place let go and took some steps back as if he had burned them. Despite himself, he frowned. What could the two figures have to scare the two galra? He got his answer when the druid on the right grabbed his arm with a pretty strong grip. Still, it’s strength was not what surprised him, it was the freezing sensation that took cold of his arm.  
It was as if it suddenly had frozen, the lower part of his arm almost burning from how cold it was, but it hadn’t gone numb, he could still fell the grip of the druid holding him in a way that would have probably left bruises if his armor wasn’t there. That was the other scary thing, he was sure the armor was designed to keep warm even if it was turned off.  
Behind him, he heard the guards whispering, and his fear increased.  
It was so ironic. He was supposed to be in the middle of the desert, and there he was, freezing.

With unnatural strength, the druid dragged him along the hallway they had come from, and he started to wonder if the armor would actually stop bruises from forming.  
At the end of the hallway, there was a door, with the same symbol that was everywhere around the ship. But he could tell there was something different about it, he just didn’t know what.

The door opened before they had even reached it and it slammed shut after they had entered. The red paladin understood that it wouldn’t open for him if he tried to escape.  
The druid let go and stared at him as his or her brother or sister started to work with some machines in a nearby table. The screen on it filled with equations.  
The room was dark, the only sources of light were the screen of the machines and some holograms hovering above them, and a dim yellow light that came from an open door at the other side of the room.  
There was a metal chair and a operation table next to each other connected to a panel the control between them. Shelves adorned the walls of the room with vials of dangerous-looking substances of weird colors, some even radiated light, and what looked like blood. There were two other tables aside from the one occupied by the druid. One held papers and there was a small one with wells that held surgery instruments and what could only be described as instruments of torture. Keith stared with wide eyes at the lines of knifes, small chainsaw, haters, and things he didn’t even know the names of.  
He turned back to the druid and stared at it’s mask. He wondered if the creature beneath it actually had four eyes.  
Then, a thought that was not his intruded his mind. ‘Take the armor off’. And his eyes widened once more as he stared terrified at the creature. It was inside his head. Could it read his thoughts? Could it control them? The actions of the guards where suddenly very clear.

Keith, knowing he was trapped in a room with two dangerous aliens that could even use telepathy, did the only rational thing. And obeyed.To his relief, as he took his last defense off, the druid started working as well in the machines. When the paladin suit lied in the ground and Keith stood in only his underwear, the druid turned around and pointed at the chair. He nervously walked to it and sat down. His hand tightened in fists when handcuffs closed on his legs and arms. He closed his eyes and a second later the sound of the druids working stopped abruptly and he felt a sharp pain on his arm.  
Keith’s breath quickened and he opened his eyes to see a huge syringe stabbing his arm and drawing a considerable amount of blood. When the needle was full, they yanked it out of his arm and the pain was even worst than the fist one. The druid didn’t bother to do anything to stop the blood flowing from the hole in his arm and just returned to the desk to put the blood in a vial and some into different machines that started showing symbols from what probably was galran.  
His heart was beating fast and it was almost a miracle that he hadn’t started to turn purple.

Then one of the druids when to the panel next to the chair and tipped something in. For a while, nothing happened and then the chair started to become cold. Soon, the metal was almost burning Keith’s skin, but he couldn’t get up. When he thought the metal would start actually burning him, the chair started to warm. Both druids were starting at his chest and he looked down to see all his veins in display, glowing but inside his skin. This seemed to please the creatures and they were busy for a while doing paperwork and putting Keith’s blood into test tubes.

A while after that his veins stopped glowing and he was back to normal. He fell asleep or he fainted, he didn’t really know.

 

When he woke up, a new pain received him. A druid was cutting a piece of his skin, peeling a small part off. But it was not normal skin, it was purple. Keith feared what would happen and if they would discover who he was, and made them pay for his father’s mistakes.

The piece of skin was used as a sample and ,too soon, the handcuffs opened and he was being dragged back into the hallway. They were back into the same room, the guards were there too, and Zarkon was on the screen with the woman.  
“So it was the flower then.” the emperor started and the druids nodded in unison. The room was cold and that’s when Keith remembered that he was only wearing his underwear. “And you also discovered the paladin is part galran. Part human and altean and half galran based on the blood samples from the other subjects.” This time, only one druid nodded. “That’s quite interesting. But I didn’t see any theories on how that heritage came to be possible. Do you have any information about it, paladin?”  
It was the first time Zarkon had acknowledged his presence and not wanting to reveal any information he just stayed quiet.  
The woman smirked and the emperor just stared. “I see.” He said dryly. “Then you should proceed with the interrogation.” He was speaking again to the druids. “Any information about Voltron and his heritage is valuable.” The screen turned black once again, and Keith was dragged back into the room, and tied to the metal table.

————————————————————————————————

He knew something had been wrong when he hadn’t answered. And then he saw the red light and how Red stopped moving. He wanted to go there, to save him, but he was too far away and he knew he had to go back for the team. Voltron couldn’t afford to lose a paladin and their leader.

Everyone was devastated. They all knew it had been a bad idea. And Keith was trapped in a galra ship without his memories and with a damaged lion.  
He wasn’t blind, Shiro had seen how the red lion moved forcefully and how Keith was unnaturally quiet and only spoke when directly asked to. but he had been distracted, and who knew what was happening to him at the moment.

Lance had been the most affected, he wasn’t surprised, after all, he had been the one to take care of Keith thought all the ordeal. The blue paladin had stayed awake all ‘night’ trying to come up with rescue plan with Coran. Shiro wanted to help, but he just couldn’t. He kept thinking of what they had to do but couldn’t come up with a plan to do it. They had to stop the ship from reaching central command and to take it down with one paladin less. But how?  
Some hours later, the team was called to the command room and the plan was informed. Lance and Pidge would get in in the green lion and hunk and Shiro would distract from outside. Allura and Coran would prepare the castle for a wormhole jump, and if they were lucky, they would cause nougat damage to slow down the ship and force it to go to central command for reparations, buying them some time.  
The plan wasn’t complicated, they probably had all been too distracted the day before to come up with it. With a course of action set, the team followed the ship and the three lions left the castle.

—————————————————————————————————

At first it wasn’t too bad, except for the fact that the druids were inside his head, asking questions that he knew he couldn’t answer. Where did he come from? Where was Voltron heading? Who were his parents? How did he change his appearance?  
But he didn’t answer and just stared at the ceiling hoping the team would come for him before the torture started. He wasn’t stupid, he knew what interrogation meant.  
It was okay at first, well, as okay as it could be when you were tied to a metal table buzzing with electricity. He did scream, just not the answers.  
They kept asking and he kept hoping.  
Soon, he found himself hoping they would come before the real torture, with the things in the small table, started.  
The druid chose a small knife. He could tell them apart by then, one was taller than the other one. The shorter one did the dirty work while the tall one took notes and used the machines.  
It started with a warning. Small and shallow cuts on his arms and legs that stung a little more than they should probably because of his damaged nerves.  
Then, the druid stabbed Keith palm. Tears appeared at the corners of his eyes and fell as he squeezed them shut.  
‘Shiro, Lance, hurry up.’

The druid yanked the knife free with another scream and more blood poured out. The bloody knife rested on the table as it took a much bigger one.  
He placed it above Keith’s thumb on his non wounded hand. It asked again.  
The red paladin knew he had to do something, they wouldn’t get there in time, and he couldn’t let them cut off his thumb, he just couldn’t.  
“I don’t know, I don’t remember! I don’t remember anything about Voltron!” He yelled his first words since the interrogation started.  
Either way the druids decided he was lying or knew he was hiding more, because the knife lowered and started to slowly pierce his skin.

————————————————————————————-

They were in. Pidge had managed to get into the control room and he was running across the ship shooting guards down. The door ahead opened when he put the severed hand of a robot in the scanner, and he found himself in a room with a big screen and two guards. He took them down.

Lance was trying to choose between the two doors in the room, left and right, when he hear a voice.  
“I don’t know! I don’t remember!” And something more he didn’t bother to pay attention to because he knew that voice and he needed to get to it’s owner before something went wrong with the plan and they ended all stuck in the ship.  
He burst into the room at the end of the hallway just as a hooded figure was about to cut Keith’s thumb. Before the druids could react, he shoot. He pressed a big green button on the panel next to the metal table and the Keith was freed. He had been guessing what the button did and he was glad he was right. He thanked Pidge for finding a way to stop the alarm from starting because he probably wouldn’t have been able to take down the creatures that lied on the floor if they had been expecting him.

Keith stood up in shaky legs and they started to run, Keith was running slower than usual and Lance felt a surge of anger when he saw the multiple cuts on his body. When he shoot the next guard that appeared in front of them, he didn’t fell the tiniest bit of regret.  
The green lion was ready and they practically jumped in.

Somehow, they came back to the castle safe. Lance wondered if it hadn’t all been a dream, and if it was actually possible that all had gone according to plan.  
When he met the others, he knew he had to get Keith out of there. Pidge had kept quiet, but he saw the team’s eyes when they saw Keith’s wounds, they had questions, he couldn’t blame them, but that was exactly what the red paladin didn’t need at the moment.  
He took Keith to a pod and told him to go inside, asking himself if the next time he spoke to Keith he would remember everything and fight with him again. After wanting that for the whole week, he found he didn’t want that to happen anymore.

——————————————————————————————————

Shiro was surprised when Lance dragged a wounded bleeding Keith out of the room and put him inside a pot before anyone could even open their mouths, when he understood why he had done that, he felt incredible inconsiderate for wanting to attack Keith with questions before he had even healed.  
Lance came back into the room looking decided, and told them they would have to wait until Keith was in condition to be interrogated and that he would decide when that was. No one objected, and Shiro felt that maybe something good had come from the experience, it was very likely that Lance and Keith wouldn’t get into fight after it was all over.

Allura congratulated the team and then simply ordered them to go to sleep, just like that. And it was one of those few times when no one complained.  
With nothing else to do, he went to his room, deciding to let Lance be if he wanted to spend the night in front of the pod, and sighed knowing the ordeal Lance had brought on the team was over.

 

—————————————————————————————————

The pod opened early the next morning while the team was having breakfast, so Lance was the only one to receive the confessed, dazed sixteen year old Keith.  
“Thanks.” He said after Lance had stopped him from falling flat on his face, and the blue paladin was glad to hear that annoyed tone that Keith usually used with him.  
“Welcome back, buddy.”  
“You know I never left, right?”  
“Yeah, whatever, but you have some explaining to do.”  
Keith sighed. “Can you take me to my room first? I need a shower.”  
“Yeah, you stink.”  
“Hey!”  
“You want me to take you there or not.” Lance asked smirking.”Or I could go tell the others you are awake and-“  
“Fine.”  
Even if Keith had never left, Lance had missed him.


	11. When

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's finally time for Keith to tell the truth.

After Keith took a long shower and finally put his signature red jacket back on, they headed to the dinning room without saying much. Everyone was waiting for them, probably having already checked the pod, and Lance could see how Keith tensed beside him and took a deep breath.  
They sat at the table and all eyes, including his, were fixed on Keith.  
“ Are you ready, Keith?” Shiro asked softly, and the the red paladin nodded. There was silence for a moment until Keith cleared his throat.

  
“The alteans arrived to earth a long time ago.” He started, and Allura gasped, her eyes widened with the realization that they weren’t the last of her species. “They spread, in different countries, and had children with humans, until the altean blood was diluted enough so it wasn’t evident.”  
No one knew how to take the news, so they just stared, waiting for the whole story.  
“ The alteans lived more than humans, one hundred years more or so, and the hybrids did as well,fifty years more than the average human. The alteans passed their knowledge from generation to generation, and even today, the humans that are just a very small part alteans keep most of the traditions. And my mom was one of them.”  
Allura’s and Coran’s eyes widened but they didn’t interrupt.  
“When she was young, the galra found the earth, and of course, the descendants of the alteans hadn’t forgotten what they had done. So they stayed away from them until it was decided that the humans and earth had little to offer and would be hard to defeat with all the weaponry they had. So they left it alone and sent soldiers to check it now and then.”  
“My mom was part of a big altean family who kept the traditions. And then, she fell in love with one of the soldiers that came. He told him she was pregnant, but he left the planet and she was thrown out of her family for treason. She made a life for herself and had him. The galra came back, and they somehow knew about us, so they attacked the house, that was in the countryside, and she was killed. My father” he said the word with hate “was there but he didn’t do anything and then escaped to who knows where. By then I could already control the transformations. The family of my mother didn’t want me so I was sent to an orphanage, the nuns found out about my transformations and they… didn’t exactly like it” something in the way he said it told them there was more to that part of the story “ I got an scholarship to the Garrison and then left when Shiro disappeared and no one appeared to know anything about it. And then spend a year in an empty shack, until he came back.”  
Lance was quite impressed by Keith’s summarizing abilities.

  
“That took a lot less time than I thought it would.” Pidge commented.  
“Keith…” ,Allura started when she finally was able to organize her ideas “the descendants still know what happened, who they were before?”  
“Yes, and many even know your… our language.” Lance noticed that Keith was uncomfortable with including himself. He wasn’t the only one who noticed, because the princess frowned.  
“What it is?” She inquired.  
Keith avoided her eyes and stared at his knees. “Is just that… my relatives excluded my mother and me, and maybe… maybe if they hadn’t pushed her away she would still be alive.”  
“I didn’t have a good time at the orphanage either.” He murmured the last part so only Shiro and Lance who were sitting at his sides heard it. Shiro looked at Keith with pity and Lance ,despite himself, wondered what had happened. Of course, he wouldn’t ask, not right away, and not yet; he knew it was better to wait for Keith to tell him, if he ever did that is.  
“I’m sorry to hear that. Sometimes the wrong people are blamed, resentment can get the worst of a person.” The princess said sincerely, but Keith looked unconvinced. He probably had heard it dozens of times before.

“Wait, can you speak altean?” Pidge asked.  
“A little. I hadn’t been learning it for long before the attack happened. And it wasn’t mom’s first priority, she wasn’t as proud of her heritage as most descendants are.”  
Coran spoke then, saying some weird words to which Keith replied something back but slower.  
“Not bad, but we could work on that.” the man said.  
“Um… thanks?”  
It was very clear that Keith felt out of place, but the others just kept asking questions.  
“Can you read it too?”  
“Better that I can speak it actually.”  
Pidge seemed impressed. “I honestly just can’t understand those symbols.”  
“If you want I could teach you the basics?”  
“I’m sure you are a better teacher than that machine.” She accepted.  
“So you got a scholarship too?” Hunk asked.  
“Too?” Shiro and Keith replied in unison.  
“Lance got one too.”  
Keith turned to look at Lance with _admiration_. “Wow. Those are pretty difficult to get, I had no idea.” He looked actually amazed, and Lance couldn’t quite believe that mr. perfect was looking at him with not only approval but also _admiration_. And Shiro, _Shiro_ was too. He felt heat rise to his cheeks, and looked down trying to suppress a smile. His parents had said how amazing it was that he got into the Garrison, several times, but it was just different. He felt proud as if he had just gotten the news and tried to suppress a smile.  
“Yeah, they are.” And as quickly as it had come his smile banished and he remembered that he was in space, away from his parents, his siblings, and safety, and that he probably would never return to the academy he had studied so hard to get to. He would never get back to show them ow much he had improved, and how well he could shoot. No smiles from his parents, no vacations to the beach, no picnics, no braiding his sisters’s hair. He would never assist to their wedding, or see Laura get into some prestigious laboratory…  
_STOP!_  
If he kept thinking like that, the tears would come, and it wasn’t his place for crying. If anything, it was Keith’s or Allura’s for discovering her species hadn’t completely disappeared.  
“Lance?” Keith was waving a hand in front of his face.  
“Sorry, I’m not feeling too well.” He stood up and walked to the door.  
“Where you injured?” Coran asked.  
“It’s not like that.” He replied without turning around. A chair moved behind him, but he ignored it as he walked in autopilot.

Pidge had had her family kidnapped, Keith had just told them how his mother had died, Shiro had been experimented on and torutured, Allura and Coran had lost their planet and families and woken alone years into the future, and he was the one in the verge of tears. Just homesick, he kept telling himself every time that happened, which was a lot more often than he let the others know. Hunk also had a family in Earth to miss, but he was taking it lot better, so why did he ask like that? Why did he had to be so _weak?_  
He ended at the command room, staring at the glass and the deeps and stars behind it, one of them with Earth and his family spinning around it.  
He sat on his seat and stared at it, as he had done many times, when a shower couldn´t calm him.  
Someone crossed his line of vision and sat in a seat.  
“I’ve seen you come here, you do it often?”  
“Yeah…” He replied vaguely.  
“You are thinking of them again, aren't you?”  
“Yeah…”  
He heard Keith sight.  
“I know you miss them, Lance, but you can’t keep beating yourself up like this. I know the others don’t notice but I do, and even if you think it doesn’t matter, it does. Maybe you won’t believe me if I tell you I care about you, but then believe me when I tell you it affects the team.”  
He really, really wasn’t in the mood, he opened his mouth, but before he could reply something he would regret later, Keith spoke again. “And before you say something about not knowing what it fells like to miss a family, I have heard it before, and remember that Shiro was gone for a year.”  
Lance felt bad for even thinking to say something like that. But he was amused that Keith had heard it before, Shiro wasn’t really the type to say something like that, and he had never seen him hanging out with anyone else at the Garrison.  
Keith read him like an open book.  
“Don’t look at me like that. Just because we weren’t friends back then doesn’t mean I didn’t have any friends.”  
He just stared at him.  
“What?”  
_‘We weren’t friends back then…’_  
He arched an eyebrow, “Oh, so does that mean we are friends now?”  
Keith rolled his eyes and he could almost heard him thinking ‘unbelievable’  
“Yes, Lance, I hate you and that’s why I came hear prepared to cheer you up or let you sob on my shoulder, because I absolutely hate you.” ‘Pidge would be proud of him right now’ Lance thought.

“So that’s why you didn’t want to return to Earth, because, you know, you had nowhere to go.”  
“…Yeah.”  
He felt like an idiot. He probably was. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”  
“Compared to other people, you asked it very, very nicely.”  
“Ummm… I- I have a twin sister.” He couldn’t believe he was telling him that, he hadn’t even told Pidge!  
Keith just raised an eyebrow. “You do?”  
“She is studying to be a scientific, her name is Laura. She is older a me for like, ten minutes, but I always say she is my older sister.”  
“I bet she is very smart.”  
“Why?”  
“If she is anything like you…”  
“Oh.” he had received more compliments from Keith in a day than he had expected to get in a lifetime.  
“Don’t ‘oh’ me, Lance. You got into the Garrison with a scholarship, do you know how many people apply for them?” “Thousands.” “Exactly, so stop acting as if you weren’t intelligent enough or as if you didn’t deserve to be here, because, honestly? You are better at this saving the universe stuff than I am.”  
“I’m not.”  
“You are, I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true, believe me.”  
“Still, I’m not. Have you seen how you fight?”  
“But I’m not good at team work.”  
“Well, yes, but I’m not.”  
“Hey!”  
“You said it yourself.”  
Keith pouted. “You are.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
“No.”  
“No.”  
“Yes.”  
Keith smirked.  
“Shit.”  
Keith chuckled “Didn’t think you would fall for that.”  
Lance tried to glare at him but ended up smiling.  
“Guess my job at getting you out of your depressive mod is done.” Keith said, standing up “But if it happens again, and you know, you need someone to talk to… I’m not a heavy sleeper so don’t come here alone again, ok?”  
“Thanks.”  
Keith was walking to the door when he stopped and turned around. “I almost forgot I never thanked you for taking care of me when I was… sick. So well, umm, thanks.”  
“Your welcome.”  
Keith turned around to exit once again.  
“Keith?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Nothing, forget it.” Lance didn’t know what else to say, but it had felt… normal, to be there talking with Keith, and he didn’t want it to end yet. But it would be weird to said that so he decided to keep it to himself.  
Keith sighed. Turned out he was very good at reading people, or at least Lance. “You wanna go to the pool later? I went down there once, but the poll was literally hanging from the ceiling, but Pidge said she had fixed it so…”  
“Sure.”  
“See you in two hours then.”

——————————————————————————————————————-

“Hunk, is this a dream?”  
“Nope.”  
“Are they actually talking like civil people then?”  
“Seems so.”  
“What.”  
The two of them had walked into the room to find Keith and Lance talking to each other like if they were old friends, and not as apart from each other as they could and glaring daggers at each other.  
“He babysitter me, what did you spect to happen.”  
“You’ve got a point.” Pidge admitted.  
They went into the pool.  
“So, you think you can start teaching me tomorrow? I would love to be able to read some of the books there are in the library.”  
“Wait, there is a library?” Lance asked, and the others just stared at him.  
“Yeah… I have read some of them actually.”  
“Why I am always the only one who doesn’t know anything?”  
“Dunno, maybe you should spend more time walking around the castle.”  
“I do but I never find anything! I mean, there’s a pool, a library, and what else, a zoo?”  
“Actually, there are space chickens. Allura calls them some weird name but basically they are pink space chicken.” Hunk added.  
Lame covered his face with his hands. “How.” He asked no one in particular.

—————————————————————————-

The next time it happened was after a couple missions. The galra knew about Keith heritage but it really didn’t seem to change anything, not when they couldn’t do any experiment on him.  
That ‘night’, Lance spent some hours staring at the ceiling before giving up and going to knock at Keith’s door.  
The boy opened it looking as if he had just gotten dressed, his hair wasn’t even messy.  
“Were you sleeping?”  
“It’s middle of the night, Lance.”  
“Yeah, but, I mean, your hair isn’t even look messy.” Keith just frowned at him in confusion. He dighted. “Forget it.”  
“It happened again?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Wanna g to the control room.”  
He nodded.

That time, they just glanced at the stars for a long while, but something about having company made it better than when he was alone.

“Do you think Laura misses me?” he asked, voicing his thoughts by accident.  
“If she loves you, which I have no doubt she does, she misses you. Shiro and I are like brothers, so I can actually tell you I know about it. She will be very happy when you go back.”  
“If.”  
“When. When we come back, I’ll tell you hiking through the dessert, you’ll probably be dehydrated after two hours, but it’s the closest thing I can offer to trip.”  
“I have been training, you know?”  
“Yeah, I was there, training you.”  
“Well, I’ll take you to one of the trips my family does to the beach and I’ll beat you at surfing. I do it every summer.”  
“Of course you will, I have never even gone to the beach.”  
“No way.”  
“The orphanage doesn’t exactly organize trips to the beach and the Garrison isn’t exactly close to it.”  
Lance shocked his head disapprovingly.  
“I may take Pidge too and present her to my smart-ass sis’. They probably will start planning a nuclear bomb or something. And the kids will love Hunk. Shiro will probably end up teaching both of us how to professionally surf, knowing him. Allura can spend the day reading a nice book, and my dad and Coran will make the parrilla afterwards.”  
“Seems fun, I’ll look forward to it.”  
“When” Lance agreed.  
“When.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was the last chapter. I hope all your questions were solved and if they weren't comment so maybe I can answer it or add something to the chapter.  
> Thanks for all the kudos and comments this fic has gotten, and please leave one more!


End file.
